


Soul Beneath the Surface

by skeletonsmama



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1940s, Electroconvulsive Therapy, Lobotomy, M/M, Mental Institutions, Unfortunately historically accurate language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-29
Updated: 2014-03-29
Packaged: 2018-01-17 09:38:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1382674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skeletonsmama/pseuds/skeletonsmama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's in the ward with the beautiful boy, with beautiful hair and a beautiful face; a shining beacon in this hell-hole called an asylum.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soul Beneath the Surface

**Author's Note:**

> To clarify, this is set roughly in the late 40's or early 50's; lobotomy and ECT were the new and most popular treatments, but in general mental health care sucked a lot.
> 
> Warnings for: Implied non-consensual ECT and lobotomization, mental health issues, kinda-graphic description of an ice-pick lobotomy, implied self-harm.

There's one thing that stops him from finding a way to rip the metal from his bedpost with his teeth and hands to slit his wrists and that's the beautiful boy with the beautiful smile and the beautiful face; a shining beacon in this hell-hole called an asylum.

The family come visit once a month, look disdainfully around at the white floors, white walls, white ceiling, white coated people out the grimy window. His mother stopped being sympathetic when they brought him in with his arms pulled over each other and bound to his sides in a straight jacket, _the_ straight jacket, marker of the epitome of lunacy.

"Your son has been behaving badly recently; he was placed in a solitary ward for a week, but we have hope he will re-assimilate into the community here."

*

He's in the ward with the beautiful boy, with beautiful hair and a beautiful face. They have matching kiss marks from the E-C-T twinning their temples. 20,000 volts delivered straight to the think tank, once a week, twice a week, whenever the doctors or the nurses or the matron felt cruel.

The beautiful boy with the beautiful face and the beautiful hair sit next to him during recreation times, never uttering a word but sitting close enough that their body heat is shared, close enough that he can see the bite marks and the scratch marks and the scar on his lip.

There are more bodies in the ward than there should be, too many bodies. There’s bodies enough that the matron, cruel matron, has him sharing a cot with the beautiful boy with the beautiful face and the beautiful hair. With his face pressed gently against the beautiful hair, the hell-hole hospital is a little less of a hell and a little closer to the purgatory he seeks for respite.

*

It's not until he sorts the files one day, helping the nurses because they help you back, because you’re capable, because his Private School mind is breaking from the repetitive monotony of itself, that he discovers the beautiful boy with the beautiful face and the beautiful hair has a name and diagnosis.

R----ENJOLRAS

DIAGNOSIS: ACUTE HOMOSEXUALITY, EXTREME MELANCHOLY, MUTISM, POSSIBLE AUDITORY HALLUCINATIONS

TREATMENT: ELECTRO-CONVULSIVE THERAPY, SWEATING; PERMISSION FOR LOBOTOMY OBTAINED

He felt his hands shake and the paper slip to the floor, monochromatic photograph of a hollow looking face staring with deadened eyes into the camera sent spinning across the floor.

Enjolras continued to sit close enough for him to feel his body heat, the hairs brushing the arm of his scratchy white cotton wear - he was proud of observing the finer details - until he got the guts, got the guttsiest guts he'd ever gotten. More guts than when Bossuet had told him to knock on the door of this hell-hole called a hospital for a dare, before he was a lunatic in his little white cotton wear.

He got guts enough to show him the quiet spot behind the ha-ha wall, to sit and wait quietly with the cold white-brick building of the morgue waited in his periphery, waiting, always waiting for him.

Then his beautiful boy with the beautiful face and the beautiful hair - _Enjolras_ -leaned forward and put his lips against his own; quickly, silently, with no fanfare beside the shrieking laughter of the simple and unwanted children spinning back and forth on their roundabout, always spinning in circles.

It's when Enjolras's breath ghosts on the thin red shell of his half-missing ear ( _incredible mental stress, they called it_ ) and he starts muttering words, low and gravelly but full of the light every shining beacon needs to remain a beacon in dreary weather.

"We can leave tonight, Grantaire. Before my operation. I can teach you, quickly, and we can leave tonight.”

*

It’s an unmitigated disaster, ending in the sting of a needle in his neck before they've made it more than two steps closer to freedom. Enjolras goes down screaming, shouting. He can almost see how red and raw his throat is, his voice hoarse from lack-of-use. Enjolras’s screams for freedom are the last weapon they have, but there is no-one else behind them, no one else defending them. The last thing he sees before his mind goes too foggy to recall is his beautiful boy with his beautiful golden soul surrounding him, face still set defiantly even as the orderlies pin him down and force a needle in his arm.

*

"No."

They're about to take away his beautiful boy with the beautiful face and the beautiful spirit.

"No."

Enjolras screams around the wooden bit, harsh radio static against the silence of the ward. His eyes are half lidded and empty from the ECT in moments.

"No."

Two at once, the doctors tap forward with their little hammer, shattering the bone around the beautiful boy’s beautiful spirited eyes and piercing his brain.

"No."

The word keeps falling from his bruise heavy lips in murmured prayer around, but there isn't a chance. His mother hasn't been sympathetic since the orderlies presented him with his arms pulled at his sides in the stiff cotton of the straight jacket.

The ink around her signature had smudged down her hand. He took pride in observing these things.

"No."

Several nurses pin him down as he spasmed violently, body fighting the lighting surge through his skull and his mind fighting for his beautiful boy with the dead spirit.

"No."

Muttered frantically while gagging on the wooden bit, from Enjolras's mouth to his, as his drooping eyelids are lifted and the sharp point pushing into bone and tissue and soul to find the bad connection in his brain that must be severed, severed in order to go back to life as his family wished it.

Grantaire waited silently in the doctors office, which had white walls and a white floor and a white ceiling and grimy windows which white-clad people wandered in front of. On the doctors desk was an open folder, the monochromatic photograph catching Grantaire’s attention once, twice, maybe a third, but never holding it for more than a few moments at a time. Each moment he held eye-contact with the hollow, deadened eyes in the photograph felt like he was travelling through space, hurtling too fast toward a destination he’d never actually come to. Grantaire didn’t like it when the stars were out.

His mother, a fine lady with an overpowering scent of perfume pervading the air around her entered the room and looked disdainfully at Grantaire. Grantaire’s eyes were still bruised and swollen, bar-fight purple and poppy-red, the mark of the lobotomised.

The file caught his attention a final time. It read:

R----GRANTAIRE

DIAGNOSIS: EXTREME MELANCHOLY, COMPULSIVE LYING, SCHIZOPHRENIA: PARANOID - AUDITORY AND VISUAL HALLUCINATIONS

TREATMENT: ELECTRO-CONVULSIVE THERAPY, AIRING, SWEATING, DOCTORS DISCRETION. [12-07-1949] LOBOTOMY PERFORMED SUCCESSFULLY.

**PATIENT DISCHARGE INTO FAMILY CARE**

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Historically accurate to the best of my research, but if there's anything particularity not right let me know!  
> 2\. Ha-Ha walls were [these things](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/eb/Ha_ha_wall_diagram.jpg) and also terrifying to sit on.  
> 3\. Title is from "Girl Anachronism" by the Dresden Dolls  
> 4\. Come say hi on [tumblr](http://officialdartnangan.tumblr.com)! If anyone wants to find out more about the 40's and the 50's mental health systems and treatments and all that jazz, come by and I can nerd out at you for a bit


End file.
